The delivery of parcels and other items to the residence of intended recipients is well known in the art.
Under the prior art, when a parcel is undeliverable, a “delivery notice” is left at the particular location, and the intended recipient then has the opportunity to call the delivery service (e.g., UPS) via telephone and arrange to have the package(s) redelivered, held at a local operation center, redirected, or returned. However, the consumer does not know much about the parcel(s) (e.g., who sent it to them) or even how many parcels were undeliverable.
The delivery service can use the address of the customer to determine the delivery center location, as well as the truck that serviced the customers' route. The delivery service will then pull the package from the truck (after matching the customer's name with the parcel(s)) and attend to the necessary handling of the parcel.
As may be understood, such activities are labor intensive.
An example of a delivery notice is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,021,942, entitled “Bar-Coded Label for ‘Attempt to Deliver’ Articles,” issued Feb. 8, 2000, but this patent attempts to resolve issues of undeliverable parcels by providing a multi-sectioned form 10 which can be separated along various perforated section lines to allow portions of the form to be attached to the parcel and other portions to be left at the delivery address.
In light of the above, it may be seen that there is a need in the art to provide an improved method for providing package or other item delivery that is less labor intensive than the methods described above.